AtlasChart: 10 rebels with a cause

Fight the systems

The most daring business innovators aren’t always found in boardrooms or tech start-ups, but in street markets, prisons and refugee camps… and at Meaning Conference.

Taking place this year on Thursday 15 November 2018 at the Brighton Dome in the UK, at Meaning you’ll find bold ideas from unexpected places. Director Louise Ash explains. “You’ll find thinkers and do-ers from business, activism, academia and the arts. You’ll find the pioneering purpose-driven businesses innovating to disrupt not only their sectors but whole systems.”

Louise gives new Meaning to asymmetry

The self-professed accidental ethical business geek counts herself lucky that meeting her heroes is a perk of the job.

“These pioneers are not just walking the talk. They are living and breathing it in the most fundamental way – standing up to governments, rejecting the status quo, risking the bottom line for their principles, showing that it can be done. I find that incredibly inspiring.”

Watch ► Our AtlasVideo from Meaning 2017:

From supermarket rebels to the designers behind the ‘good’ card game that’s big in Japan, Louise’s Meaning-ful AtlasChart features just some of the inspirational Meaning speakers past, present and future…

“A revolutionary supermarket is proving that Brighton really does rock, by making it easier to be a good consumer. Rather than tinkering around the edges of responsible shopping, HISBE is going all-out to challenge the supermarket status quo and prove things can be different. We really do agree, HISBE supermarket is just ‘How It Should BE’.”

“The Empathy Museum is an ambitious artistic endeavour that strives to help us all discover the empathy we can use in our daily lives and work. The museum’s brilliantly-named A Mile in My Shoes exhibit uses a bold approach to meet this challenge. It takes a literal interpretation of the well-known saying, offering each visitor a box containing an audio player and a pair of shoes.”

“Do you know what the SDGs are? They are a framework for developing a fair, prosperous and environmentally sustainable world that has been agreed by every UN nation. But sometimes global goals like these can seem too big to enable a single person, organisation, or community to make a difference. That’s where the multiplayer, in-person, card-based 2030 SDGs Game comes in.”

“Screw the others, Fairphone is the coolest phone on the planet and I’m really excited that we’ve finally managed to get the MD Eva Gouwens to come and speak at Meaning after years of fan stalking them! (Factoid – she used to be the MD of Tony’s Chocolonely!) This is the ultimate example of a group of people identifying a problem in the world and stepping up to do something very tangible and meaningful about it. ”

“There’s a growing unease about the use of behavioural advertising. Rather than blocking ads, privacy tool app Better blocks the code that tracks our activity, giving us back a level of privacy most of us have surrendered to the likes of Google and Facebook.”

“I’m not sure if it’s the audacious nature of the founding story, the joyful branding, the symbolism of the uneven shaped pieces in the bars, the damn fine tasty chocolate or the underlying mission, but Tony’s Chocolonely is one of the most inspiring businesses I’ve ever come across. After having himself arrested as a ‘chocolate criminal’ for being complicit in slavery and child labour, Teun van de Keuken founded a better kind of chocolate company with a focus on humour.”

“With a football pitch that is organic and rainwater-fed,an eco-friendly stadium with solar panels, LED floodlights and a menu only serving vegan food, Forest Green Rovers is turning ‘the beautiful game’ green. I love this spirit of putting a flag in the ground and saying ‘no, we can do this differently, we don’t have to conform to the status quo’. It obviously comes with a risk that traditional football fans will balk at its difference (especially the vegan food) but eco-warrior Dale Vince is not willing to compromise his values and I love him for that.”

“Oatly is milk from oats grown in Sweden. But it’s not just a tasty, healthy alternative to cow’s milk, it’s a fun-loving for profit business that’s helping farmers in Sweden to transition away from planet-trashing dairy farming to a more sustainable crop for themselves and for the environment. Oatly aren’t allowed to call it milk though due to legal action from the the milk industry in Sweden who are obviously feeling a little worried about these cow-less imposters. But it is milk. And it is good. And it is the future.”

“Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics was founded in a kitchen workshop in 1995. Now a family-run global chain with hundreds of stores all over the world, the ultimate beauty delicatessen of natural, organic and vegan products is still run out of the original shop in Poole in Dorset. The deeply-held values of sustainability and animal welfare have earned Lush a reputation for being uncompromisingly ethical. But they don’t shout about any of this. Plus, they pioneered the fizzing bath bomb. What’s not to love?”

“Zaytoun is the world’s first Fairtrade cooperative producing Palestinian olive oil. In 2004 activists used their European passports to provide Palestinian farmers with safe passage to their olive trees in the occupied territories. It’s been said that olive oil from the West Bank is ‘the most political food in the world‘. Made from some of the planet’s oldest olive trees in the world, Zaytoun (the Arabic for olives) provides dignity and hope to the farmers as well as a fair income.”

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